FEATURE:
Conception to Dissection
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Obtaining and Paying for Song Rights, and the Many Upsides of an Album Podcast
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I wanted to split this feature…
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into two, as I have been reading a few articles regarding podcasts – I will bring them in later. I have been planning my own podcast for a while and, whilst I shall not bore you (again) with the specifics, there is a lot to sort out before starting out. Because I am planning a podcast that looks inside the studio albums of an artist, music from them will be used. Of course, it is a myth that one can use a small clip of music without paying, or that you can use whatever you want if your podcast if not-for-profit or you credit an artist. When it comes to use of music in podcasts, one needs to make sure that they are asking for permission. There are some great albums podcasts out in the market that have a very healthy fanbase. Song Exploder takes apart songs and we get to see how they came together and get a look at the engine inside the machine, as it were. I love podcasts like this, as it has inspired me to start my own. When it comes to copyright and getting song clearance, this article explains how one must act:
“How to correctly use copyrighted material
To make a long story short, there is no loophole to get around the use of copyrighted media without purchasing the rights to the use the work or obtaining permission from the copyright holder. If you do not have express permission to access and use a person’s copyrighted works, you cannot include them in your podcast without risking legal action.
So you may now be wondering, “Well then, how can I use music and sound effects in my podcast?” Luckily, there are a number of ways you can obtain access to media for use in your production, both paid and free.
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Licensing music and audio
Your first option is to license the rights to a piece of music or sound. Basically, licensing requires you to purchase the permission to use a piece of copyrighted material. Unless your budget is astronomical, you probably won’t be able to purchase a license for something like a Beatles song, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get access to music. There are a number of stock music and sound effects websites that allow you to purchase copyrighted materials. Depending on the site, you may be able to purchase a subscription to a catalog of files, or you may have to purchase each individual asset separately. You can simply search the internet for the stock audio site that best fits your individual needs. One of the benefits of purchasing the rights to a work is that the license likely does not require attribution of the media”.
For me, I am not sure how to get around the issue of cost. Using stock audio and subscribing that way might be an option, but it is quite daunting realising, before I have even started, how expensive it might be to secure permission to use songs/an album on my podcast. This might sound like I am encouraging people to avoid doing podcasts that involve music, but I think we should be encouraging more to come onto the market. There are some great music-related podcasts around that are listening to, but there is a bit of a gap when it comes to album podcasts and those that dissect an artist and their work.
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I want to bring in a recent feature from The Guardian where Miranda Sawyer discussed the rise of podcasts, how niche podcasts can go big and, why, mixing podcasts and music might not be the best recipe:
“This is podcasting’s boom time. There are now more than 900,000 podcasts to choose from. In the US, 22% of the population listens to at least one podcast every week and 51% to at least one podcast in their life (roughly 168 million people). In the UK, 12.5% of us (about 7.1 million people) listen to podcasts weekly, up 58% in the past two years. And on average, those UK podcast fans are hoovering up approximately seven podcasts a week. Even throughout lockdown, when other art forms closed or stopped producing, podcasts have continued to grow. The big shows just got bigger.
There is an argument, though, that niche is where it’s at, especially when niche goes big. The most popular podcasts in the UK are made by enthusiasts, from Kermode and Mayo to My Dad Wrote a Porno. Jamie Morton, with his other MDWAP hosts, James Cooper and Alice Levine, has now done a full world tour twice, selling out the Sydney Opera House and New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Still, he says that when he moved into a new house recently, he had to explain to his neighbour what he did, “which was embarrassing. They didn’t know what a podcast was and the title was a bit… suspect.”
So, can Big Niche go Big Big? Perhaps not. First, podcasts don’t really do music very well, due to rights issues. And second, they have always been about individual listening, on headphones. It’s emphatically not a shared experience, listening to a podcast. Which is why many people find it hard to convert. They want a voice chuntering in the background, not someone whispering in their ear. Headphones can feel oppressive and podcasts are too intimate (or sweary!) to blast out to everyone in the room”.
I agree that podcasts are quite personal – though they do not need to be. I know of households that listen to podcasts together as they have shared interests; others share podcasts with friends and family. The more common way of listening to a podcast is through earphones/headphones, so it does remove that community feel. That said, it need not be a bad thing. We all need somewhere we can get away from everything else and have that sense of isolation through audio. I agree that the expense and difficulty of using music for podcasts means there are fewer music podcasts that other genres. It is a shame, as some of the finest podcasts I have heard recently have been about albums and going through them song by song – including the much-mentioned (on this blog) I am the Eggpod (as Beatles fan Chris Shaw guides us through Beatles and solo Beatle albums with a guest). For music nerds, a podcast that forensically examines a song or album is like catnip! We spend a lot of time listening to music, but how often do we consider how they came together? By learning more about the creation and inspiration behind songs, I feel we get a new understanding and appreciation. So often, we skip through tracks and never really allow the music to absorb. Whether a podcast involves a well-known face discussing their favourite tracks or we look at one artist’s back catalogue with more detail, I think there is this balance of the intimate and communal.
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Whilst we might not blare a music podcast in a house or street, I have bonded with people online through our shared love of a music podcast. From there, you discover other artists or new albums/songs from the artist in question. Having heard album podcasts about The Beatles and David Bowie, I have connected with new people, got more involved with those artists’ work, and I have found myself listening to artists that inspired them – expanding my musical library and horizon. I think podcasts and music do mix really well, in the same way as radio mixes chat with music perfectly. The biggest reason why there has not been a bigger explosion of music/album-related podcasts is rights and costs. It is a shame but, as those in the market has shown, there is a real appetite; not just from people subscribing but guests that are on the podcasts – the unmissable opportunity to discuss at length their favourite songs and albums. I think, if more podcasts creators could manage to balance talk with music in a way that was affordable – using fewer songs or obtaining them at a lower cost -, then we could see some great new albums podcasts emerge. I would love to hear artists like Joni Mitchell, Blur, Radiohead and Madonna given a podcast treatment – I realise some of these artists have had podcasts made about them, but very few that pull apart albums and discuss songs in depth. For me, hearing people examine an album in detail is eye, opening, mind-expanding, soul-soothing and…
PURE bliss.